Gun Control

January 23, 2013 - No Comments

A note for gun rights proponents: the expiration of the last assault weapons ban coincided with the Patriot Act. We have had no assault weapons ban since then, and in that time we get kill lists, suspension of habeas corpus, and indefinite detention. There is no correlation between access to guns and corrupt government.

I can hear the answer: well, we need military-style weapons so that it doesn’t get really out of hand. It’s already out of hand. This quote says it:

“If the reason you own guns is to respond to tyranny – you would have acted by now.”

Meanwhile, real people are dying in real life.

The problem is basic – people who are most afraid of tyranny are those who think Obama is a Marxist. Obama. It’s hard to take these people seriously – especially when they didn’t care about the Patriot Act the first time around. And they don’t even seem to care about indefinite detention – so long as Muslims are the targets. The main thing they scream about is “socialism” in relation to a minor increase in taxes on rich people. The same people who scream about a minor regulation on 30-clip semi-automatic weapons. I don’t what the hell is wrong with the human race that people get this upset about shit that is not that big a deal.

Do you think people should have unlimited access to machine guns? No? Then you know how gun control advocates feel. Gun control has nothing to do with tyranny, militias, or Hitler, but general safety. Gun control might not work – James Holmes or Adam Lanza might find another way to kill people. But it could work. And this could is more important than stopping an imagined Fourth Reich.

There’s already a tyranny of mass murder happening today: “In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour.” If the government was doing this to its own citizens, people would be revolting. Yet those who are most paranoid about government genocide are the most complicit in letting this continue.

My problem with the constitutional argument is it treats the 2nd amendment like it’s scripture. Even scripture isn’t scripture. The 2nd Amendment makes about as much sense as ““You shall have no other gods before me” in the Ten Commandments. Modernity has moved on from that. People are meant to evolve – to adapt and change according to the environment. So are countries. It is no great surprise that gun rights fanatics are less likely to believe in evolution, and more likely to worship old time religion. The “tyranny” they’re most afraid of is their own irrelevance.

Maybe it comes down to this: I fear a lunatic with a loaded gun far more than I fear my government. And I hate what’s become of the government.